Sunday, December 17, 2017

The inaugural Ontario SMB Cloud Summit event was sponsored by Long View Systems as part of its commitment to helping business adopt Cloud computing. Nolan Evans, General Manager, Ontario at Long View Systems explained why the SMB Cloud Summit and DCD Connect are important to support “At Long View Systems we have a uniquely Canadian perspective. We know it is critical for our customers to get good advice and support as they define their business goals in the context of Cloud to take advantage of the unique capabilities this model offers. As a provider who has built managed services on our own Cloud and on public Cloud, we have a lot of experience that can help avoid the pitfalls of new technology adoption. Participating in the Cloud Summit allows us to bring those learnings to the community in a collaborative way with information that is relevant for those in Central Canada”

Joanne Anderson the Director for Technology Adoption and Regional Growth from the Ontario Investment Office. Provided the introduction and noted that while 80% of US companies have invested in cloud only 50% in Canada have. This was one of the driving factors in putting the event together.

Michael O’Neil @oneil_intoronto, the host for the panelist discussions for the day is one of the world’s most senior IT industry analysts. During his 25 year career, he has led four different IT consulting companies and spearheaded leading-edge research projects in North America and around the world. He led the day’s events in a series of focus discussions on key aspects of cloud adoption.

Feisal Hirani @feztech and Paul O’Doherty @podoherty, two of Long Views Principal Cloud Architects joined a distinguished list of speakers and industry experts for two days of interactive discussions on the development of Cloud for SMB and Enterprise businesses. Ivan Brinjak @ivanbrinjak the Sales Director at Long View Systems and John Kaus @john_Kaus the Cloud Sales specialist where on hand to help customers reflect on their current and future plans for hybrid IT and cloud adoption.

The feedback and audience interaction was fantastic. While it was the 1.0 version of the event, the wealth of industry expertise on hand over the two days establishes the event as an important source of relevant information for assisting businesses in Ontario in adopting Cloud technology.

Friday, December 15, 2017

Based on a presentation by Terry Mandin @TerryMandin
Microsoft is simplifying IoT through the use of the Azure IoT Suite and the following components:

Azure IoT Hub – the gateway that allows you to ingest data

Azure Time Series Insights – this enables you to graphically analyze and explore data points

Microsoft IoT Central; a fully managed IoT SaaS

Azure IoT Edge; a virtual representation of your IoT device that can download code to a physical device and have it execute locally.

Microsoft also has a certification program to validate security on 3rd party products called Azure IoT Security. Azure IoT Edge is recently announced and is provided by Microsoft for enabling you to keep data close to the enterprise. IoT Edge forces the computing back out to the gateway device by enabling the the ability to push IoT modules called ‘module images’ from a repository on the Azure Cloud.

In the oilfields of Alberta, IoT is being leveraged to monitor pumpjacks to determine if they are working properly based on data sent to an IoT hub on the Azure cloud. In the next version of the IoT solution, the customer will send the a module image with custom code to the gateway device using IoT Edge.

In this model a gateway device will be placed on the Well site right next to the pumpjack. The Azure IoT Edge agent and runtime runs on the gateway, using local processing to find problems. If a problem is found then the pumpjack speed can be adjusted quickly while also logging the information to the cloud for maintenance.

The code or ‘module image’ in built in the repository within Azure. You also provision an IoT Edge Device in Azure which is a logical representation of your gateway. You define which modules will run on the gateway in Azure. The IoT Edge looks at the module image and pushes it out to the gateway which has the runtime environment and agent on it. When you deploy the physical device, you install the Azure IoT Edge runtime which pulls the modules down from the cloud. This is done without compromising security.

The IoT Edge agent on the device ensures the Edge module is always running and reports the health back to the cloud. The IoT Edge also communicates to the other IoT leaf devices which are other physical devices with sensors. The IoT runtime and agent can run on something as small as a physical Sensor or as large as a full blown Gateway hardware device.

You can run your own custom code within a module image or several Azure modules including Stream Analytics, Azure functions and AI and Machine learning. You can push down both Machine learning and cognitive functions as well. The underlying software that is the runtime is container based supporting the individual containers or image modules.

Ozge Yeloglu @OzgeYeloglu, Data and AI Lead of Microsoft Canada has a core team of Data architects and Data Scientists located in central Canada. They have combined architects and scientists so that privacy and compliance is part of the AI implementation. Ozge was the first Data Scientist hired in Canada by Microsoft. Prior to Microsoft, Ozge was co-founder of a startup that analyzed logs to predict application failures.

What is artificial intelligence? The definition is “Intelligence exhibited by machines mimicking functions associated with human minds”. The three main pillars of human functions are reasoning (learning from data), understanding (interpreting meaning from data) and interacting (interacting with people in a human way). We are still very far away from natural human interaction with AI.

The reason AI is such a hot topic is because of advancements in the foundational components: Big Data, Cloud Computing, Analytics and powerful query algorithms. These are more universally available than at any other time in history.

Digital Transformation in AI can be looked at in four pillars: Enable your customers through customer analytics and measuring customer experiences. Enable your employees through business data differentiation and organizational knowledge. Optimize your operations using intelligent predictions and deep insights (IoT). The final pillar is to transform your products by making them more dynamic?

The four foundational components for an AI platform is infrastructure, IT service, Digital Services and Cognitive data. The reality is that based on Gartner's research is that of the discussions happening on AI only 6% are at the implementing stage. Largely the majority of discussions are about knowledge gathering.

Ozge is doing a lot of lunch and learns to help people understand what AI is all about. Often once understood they realize that they need the foundational pieces in place before being ready for AI.

It is important to start with a single business problem, build the machine learning tooling and demonstrate the value. As you work through the use case you are educating your people. Essentially this applies a building block approach. Ozge recommends starting near future because the tools and technologies are emerging so quickly. Starting with a three year plan almost guarantees that the tools you select today will be obsolete by the time the project finishes.

It is important to know your data estate. If your data is not the right data your solutions will not be the right solutions. If it your data is not in the right place, it will take to long to run. Building the right data architecture is an enabler for AI. Great AI needs great data. It is important to also find the right people. Many Data Scientists are generalists so they may not have the right Domain expertise for your particular business. For this reason it may be better to take existing people and train them on Big Data management.

A good AI Solution is built on a AI platform, with comprehensive data, that resolves a business problem surrounded by the right people.

VMware Horizon Suite

About Me

I am a Principal Cloud Architect at Long View Systems and have spent 16 years designing, implementing, and managing IT Infrastructures in highly available computing environments. My primary areas of focus are the deployment of virtualization (Server, Storage, Desktop, Application and WAN Optimization).